Dr. Murray Bowen Family Systems Therapy Contribution

¶ … Dr. Murray Bowen family systems therapy contribution family therapy. Explain the Bowenian Dr. Murray Bowen's place in family systems therapy is secure and is one of the most prominent of theorists within this field. He has helped to pioneer a number of important concepts within this discipline, which have actually served to revolutionize the field itself and its very conception of not only human nature, but of human interactivity at the family level.

In fact, Bowen's work in family systems therapy has transcended this field alone, and has been applied to others aspects of erudition such as crisis situations and how people respond to them -- as denoted by his work with the Environmental Protection Agency (Baege, 2005). In contemporary times, Bowen's theory (alternately referred to as the Bowenian model) serves as the basis for family systems therapy.

Throughout the course of his Bowen's professional career he uncovered numerous theoretical innovations that have helped to shed light on what is actually the science of human nature. The author chose to direct most of his efforts towards the family as one of the most viable forms and units of human nature. Of his many contributions to family systems therapy, the notion that the family is largely interdependent upon one another from an emotional and social viewpoint remains one of the most notable.

Moreover, the implications of such a viewpoint created ripple effects throughout this field, as Bowen was one of the first people to acknowledge the fact that when there is a degree of dysfunctional behavior within a family, it naturally extends itself to affect (in a variety of ways) other individuals within that family. Bowen innovated this theoretical advancement while working on schizophrenic individuals and their effects on their families (Baege, 2005).

This was an extremely important discovery because it shifted the symptoms of whatever form of dysfunctional affliction that was affecting a family member outside of just that member and into the lives, emotions and thoughts of the rest of the family. This advancement in the field was responsible for the tendency of theorists and practitioners to regard the family as a unit, and the issues affecting one member (even in relatively healthy or normal situations) as affecting all of them.

However, there was a degree of ambitiousness in Bowen's theoretical work which is also one of his primary contributions to family therapy systems. Bowen's model consists of eight interlocking concepts, and the final of these pertains to societal emotional process. Although there are elements of this tenet that apply Bowen's theory outside of the family and to society at large, this particular concept actually examines society from an evolutionary perspective. The facet of evolution is a concept that was not well studied prior to Bowen's work on the subject.

However, it is noteworthy that again, this eighth interlocking concept stems directly from the principle idea that the family is one of the basic units of which to examine and codify human behavior and interaction. Yet Bowen should be credited for introducing an evolutionary aspect to family systems therapy. In deconstructing the Bowenian model of family therapy, it is pivotal to realize the importance that Bowen ascribed to systems thinking and to emotional processes.

Systems thinking, of course, views the world and its processes as an interaction between a variety of systems. One of the core principles of Bowenian theory is that the ties that bind family members are largely emotional in nature, and there is a degree of interdependence among family members intrinsically related to their emotional involvement. This connection is still existent in situations in which there is literal or even emotional distance among family members, which invariably affects them in one way or another. The subsequent quotation readily illustrates this notion.

Family members…profoundly affect each other's thoughts, feelings, and actions… People solicit each other's attention, approval and support and react to each other's needs…The connectedness and reactivity make the functioning of family members interdependent. A change in one person's functioning is predictably followed by reciprocal changes in the functioning of others (The Bowen Center, No date).

Due to this interactivity and the emotional processes shared among family members, Bowen's theory is principally concerned with reducing feelings of negativity among family members from a holistic perspective in which the entire unit considered. Specifically, one of the primary point addressed by Bowen's model is the reduction of stress. Bowen propagated the notion that due to the interconnectivity between family members, when there is a problem affecting one of those members others attempt to deal with it as the problem affects the family.

These members may take an active role in helping the person who has the problem (such as a clinical one), but they also take an active role in helping and comforting other members of the family who are inherently affected by the problem. Sometimes, the person internalizing the problem the most for the sake of the family can become overwhelmed and be adversely affected as well.

Thus, the chief objective of Bowen's theory is "to reduce chronic anxiety by 1) facilitating awareness of how the emotional system functions; and 2) increasing levels of differentiation, where the focus is on making changes for the self rather than on trying to change others" (Brown, 1999, p. 95). In attempting to apply such family system therapy to a particular population, it is necessary to consider the relationship between the family and that population, or between the family and society as a whole.

Bowen believed that the family functioned as a microcosm of society and that his principles regarding the former applied to the latter. When applying his theory to society, it is necessary to emphasize the eighth concept, the societal emotional process. This aspect of Bowen's theory (as well as the rest of it) would look at societal ills of a certain population in much the way that it would if those ills were the problem of one individual in the family.

It would examine the ramifications of those ills throughout the entire society, not just for the percentage of the population that was actually.